March, 1969

On March 14, my 18th birthday, I have my first legal drink, bought for me by my friend Danny Moaks father, at the Ontario Bowling Alley. I went on to consume a fair amount of other libations for approximately 34 more years. I believe it was most likely a Genny Beer that night.

I had begun to drink occasionally during the Summer of Love in 1967, though as long as I can remember my parents would allow me a "sip" of beer, usually on Sundays after church. My "sips" later became furtive "gulps" when my parents weren't looking. In 1967, my older brother turned 18 and thus legal in New York, so my friends and I would get him or another older friend to procure alcohol for us. Usually, we consumed beer or malt liquor, but at some point we advanced to blackberry brandy - usually a half pint, which was just enough to get high but not wasted. One night the half pint became a pint, and this produced in me a sudden, but exhilarating state of total intoxication.

Blackberry brandy, when consumed in quantity and then vomited up, produces significant and colorful stains on one's clothing, especially when the intoxicant does not have the common sense to move one's head to the side during the act of expulsion. I arrived home the next morning thus covered and did my best, given the magnitude of my first hangover, to hide this fact from my mother, who to my ever-lasting regret - met me at the door as I was trying to escape upstairs and remove the offending clothing. She knew immediately the cause of my distress and shame, and I was left with no alternative bit to spill the truth after some few feeble attempts to lie my way out of the situation. Worse still, she got me to admit that our source for the alcohol was my brother, who she next attacked while he was sleeping.

For the remainder of that hungover day, she kept warning me of the consequences when "your father gets home." When he finally arrived home from work around 5:30 and had, ironically, fixed himself a drink and sat down in his favorite chair to read the evening paper, I was sent in by my mother to admit my guilt and await his harsh judgment. And I will never forget his words to me after I had blurted out my scandalous admission of my misdeeds -

"How do you feel now?"
"Terrible", I said. And I meant it.
"Well, let that be a lesson to you". And he went back to his paper. And that was it.

I did, at least, learn some lesson from this incident. Though I continued to drink, sometimes heavily, until my early 50s, I rarely crossed that line into extreme intoxication. I would always stop before I reached that terrible stage.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Slaughterhouse-Five Or The Children's Crusade is published. The New York Times, in a review dated March 31, says "Vonnegut Jr., an indescribable writer whose seven previous books are like nothing else on earth, was accorded the dubious pleasure of witnessing a 20th-century apocalypse. During World War II, at the age of 23, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned beneath the city of Dresden, ''the Florence of the Elbe.'' He was there on Feb. 13, 1945, when the Allies firebombed Dresden in a massive air attack that killed 130,000 people and destroyed a landmark of no military significance. Next to being born, getting married and having children, it is probably the most important thing that ever happened to him. And, as he writes in the introduction to Slaughterhouse-Five, he's been trying to write a book about Dresden ever since. Now, at last, he's finished the ''famous Dresden book.''

I don't exactly recall when I first read Slaughterhouse-Five, perhaps the next year. But it had a profound affect on me, more so than anything I had read up to that point or seldom since. The section on which Vonnegut describes the bombing sequence moving in reverse helped shape my views of life and war and the utter insanity of how humans can behave.

Supergroup Cream release their final album, Goodbye, featuring the song Badge, co-written by Eric Clapton and George Harrison.

The previous year, I managed to get tickets to see Cream and The Vanilla Fudge perform at the old Auditorium Theater in Rochester. This was before I could drive, so I remember that my Dad drove me and a friend in to the city for the concert. We got in, but before the music started, Cream's manager came out onstage and announced that the band's instruments hadn't arrived and thus they could not perform. The audience was given the choice of seeing just the Vanilla Fudge or getting their money back. We wisely got our money back and Dad had to drive back to get us. So I almost got to see Cream live...but it was not to be and I still regret it....

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President (1953-1961) dies on March 28. "Ike" was President from the time I was about 2 til I was about 10, though I have few memories of being aware at all of that fact. I do remember his re-election campaign of 1956 only because my mother hung an Eisenhower poster in our old kitchen as a joke for my father to see - he was a hard core Democrat and ardent Stevenson supporter - but I didn't at all understand the joke, but I guess it was my first exposure to politics.

On March 12, Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman at the Marylebone register Office in London. On the same day, George and Patti Harrison are arrested on drug possession charges.

On March 20, John Lennon marries Yoko Ono at the British Consulate in Gibraltar. From March 25 - 31, John and Yoko conduct a "Bed In" for peace at the Amsterdam Hilton, Room 902.

Doors singer Jim Morrison is charged with several felony counts of indecent exposure, public profanity, and public intoxication in Miami after a concert on March 1. He was eventually convicted on two misdemeanors the following year.

The Swedish "cult" film I am Curious (Yellow) is first released in the U.S. The controversial film was the subject of heated court battles, customs seizures, and yes - intense curiosity. I managed to see this film at some point that year, though I remember virtually nothing about it, so other than the sex scenes, I was probably bored with it.



Within a span of seven days, both Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray admit to killing Robert F. Kennedy (Sirhan) and Martin Luther King (Ray) in 1968. I'm glad to note that they both continue to rot in hell, Sirhan still incarcerated, and Ray, who died in 1998, in the spiritual sense.

In South Vietnam, Lieutenant Joseph R. Kerrey, United States Naval Reserve displays tremendous courage and is later awarded the Navy Medal of Honor "for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty on 14 March 1969 while serving as a SEAL Team Leader during action against enemy aggressor (Viet Cong) forces in the Republic of Vietnam...Lieutenant Kerrey received massive injuries from a grenade which exploded at his feet and threw him backward onto the jagged rocks. Although bleeding profusely and suffering great pain, he displayed outstanding courage and presence of mind in immediately directing his element's fire into the heart of the enemy camp." This on my 18th birthday that day, while I was having my first legal beer....not very heroic I'm afraid.

Wrestling season was coming to an end. My last match, in the state sectionals, occurred around this time. I'd completely had it with the sport, and had a moment of truth in that match that I simply did not want to do this any longer. If I won the match, I'd have to go on - I was winning, but I simply let the other guy win, on points, to bring an end to it and that phase of my life. My coach was very pissed off at me for losing...my attitude was "screw it." The only wrestling I intended to do in the future was with women. I've had some success with that sport, but have also lost some close matches....

They did sometimes bring the Wayne Central cheerleaders to the matches, which was a plus. I guess the basketball team could spare them on occasion...

I must say with all honesty that I loved these girls - they were my idea of smart, sexy teenage America! And I love them still.